Survey: The Professions of Good and Evil
For some it is nurses and teachers; for others, soldiers and firefighters; for others priests and missionaries, who hold the jobs most worthy of praise. In the Second World War, farmers and miners were considered sufficiently essential to be reserved occupations - whilst in COVID, we found that some of the least well paid jobs, such as retail workers and delivery drivers, were essential to keep the country running.
What of the other side of the coin? Depending on one’s political views, arms manufacturers1, accountants who specialise in tax avoidance, or lefty human rights lawyers may all come in for criticism - justified, or not? And what of the vice professions: gambling, tobacco, alcohol or sex work? Where do these jobs stand?
Others may say that no job (or almost no job) is particularly virtuous or reprehensible: that to work and to support oneself is good, but that all jobs are needed to maintain our society, and we should judge some jobs better than others based on vibes, or whether it feels compassionate.
This survey seeks to investigate which jobs people see as morally virtuous or reprehensible.
There are 45 jobs listed. For each, simply say whether you think it is morally virtuous to do this job, morally reprehensible to do this job, or neither morally virtuous or reprehensible.2
As always with survey posts, please do share widely - the more people who take it, the better.
The survey will close on Sunday 16 March with results published shortly afterwards.
Perhaps less so, now that recent events have highlighted the necessity of defence.
If preferred, you can replace these categories in your own mind with ‘Good / Lil bit good /Neither good nor evil / Lil bit evil / Evil’.
Interesting!
I feel like most jobs are morally neutral, but that some of the ones listed here (politician, police, arguably human rights lawyer) need an option like "can be very good or very evil", and that some important signal would be lost by equating this to "neutral", but it doesn't seem right to tick a box on the only-good or only-evil side for them either, so I'm not sure how to answer those.
I was expecting to see something like "health insurance executive" or "claims adjuster" on here (or is it too US-centric?) One of the (many) polarising issues lately seems to be whether Luigi Mangione is a murderer who shot an innocent family man in cold blood, or a folk hero who delivered justice to a mass murderer who had the blood of thousands on his hands on account of his job. (I think the latter comes from a view that not saving people is morally equivalent to actively killing them and/or that resources are infinite so any attempt to allocate them is evil. I prefer the UK NHS over the US private healthcare system, but obviously in either case you need someone making decisions about what gets funded and what doesn't. I wonder if a "British Luigi" would have killed someone from NICE.)
I do love your substack!